HISTORY

Founded by Drs. Vacharee and Andrew Peterson, Community Dental Care was one of the first private clinics in the Twin Cities that focused primarily on serving low-income patients from all walks of life.

They immediately began to provide a complete array of preventative, restorative, routine, and emergency dental services to an ethnically diverse community of individuals, children, families, and the elderly – mostly people who are in poverty – anyone who needed care.

To ensure continued access to high-quality dental care for the large number of our patients enrolled in public programs, the clinic was incorporated into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in August 2004 and began serving patients as a nonprofit in January 2005. In May 2008, Community Dental Care opened its second clinic location in Maplewood. In December 2012, a third location opened in Rochester in the RCTC Heintz Center. In January 2014, Community Dental Care launched its fourth location, in Robbinsdale. We opened up a second and larger clinic in Rochester as our fifth location in August 2017. In September 2022, we opened a clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota. In July 2024, we moved our Robbinsdale clinic to a new, larger facility in Crystal, MN.

Today, with 83 dental chairs and a staff of over 270 professionals, Community Dental Care provides dental services to nearly 50,000 patients every year. Community Dental Care is governed by the 11-member volunteer board of directors and a three-member advisory council in Rochester. About 63 percent of Community Dental Care’s staff members are racially/ethnically diverse and/or bilingual, with more than 34 languages represented.